Friday, December 30, 2011

CONTEST: Letters From Dad

Last
week, my family gathered at my Aunt’s house for our annual Chanukah party. Each year, we chat with the extended
family, eat a wonderful brisket with a side of potato latkes, and exchange
gifts. This year, we were in for
an unexpected treat.

As
coffee and dessert were being served, my grandma brought out an old shoebox. She handed it to my mother, saying, “You
might enjoy looking at what’s inside here.” I watched as my mom opened up the box and took out a pile of
photographs of my father when he was a kid at summer camp, along with dozens of
letters in his, now lost, cursive script.

For
more than hour, my sister and I took turns reading the letters aloud, much to
the entertainment of the whole family.
The letters were short and to the point. Again and again he would write that he loved tennis and
waterskiing, and that he was the starting shortstop on the baseball team. He wanted them to send him the daily
sports section to camp, because he had no way of knowing how his beloved
Orioles were fairing.

The
funniest part about the letters was how they ended seemingly every time. He always asked that they’d send him
gum. He’d write, “Please send up
some gum,” or, “I’m out of gum, please send more,” and best of all, “P.S.
Please send gum, lots of it.”
Eventually, my grandmother obviously got sick of these requests and she
wrote a letter to my father calmly explaining that if she sent him more gum
now, by the time it got to camp he’d already be home, so he should kindly stop
asking.

This
small window into my father’s childhood was unlike anything I had before
experienced. My dad never really
talked that much about what he was like when he was a kid. Seeing his cursive writing and amateur
spelling is something that I will never forget. Hearing my dad’s 12-year-old voice pleading with my
grandparents for bubblegum was the best present I could’ve asked for.